Each Little World

Covidian decor

At the beginning of May I decided if we were going to be spending more time at home I wanted to make the space look and feel fresh. So one day while Mark was in the country shooting photos, I rearranged the living room furniture. I put the couch perpendicular to the big window wall so I could enjoy views of the garden all summer. It had been parallel to that wall and facing the fireplace. I rolled up the rug that is usually under our glass topped coffee table to make the space feel even airier.

When Mark came home, he approved of the changes but said it was his turn now. He would replace the art on the wall that his reading chair faces and redo the tabletop display in front of that same wall. He printed three of the scenes from his day in the country, popped them into frames and put them on the wall. 

Then he set up a display of our collection of tea pots, most of which are rarely all out at the same time.

Though teapots are one of the most inventive forms potters create, we've limited ourselves to this small grouping.

An antique Japanese version in iron with a bronze lid, that caught Mark's eye, is last addition to our little group.

The first teapot I ever bought, back in the 1980s, at the Potter's Wheel gallery in Door County. The artist is Polly Whitcomb.

This one is by Bill Farrell of Galena, Illinois. Bill is one of our favorite artists; we have quite a number of his works from tea bowls to sculptural containers.

This beautiful example is by Tony Gebauer of TR Pottery in Fish Creek, Door County, Wisconsin. 

A raku pot, also from a gallery in Door Country, by Lou Ann Lewis.

A pot that pours perfectly by Mark Skudlarek of Cambridge Woodfired Pottery outside of Madison. We own untold numbers of useful and beautiful items made by Mark. All but one or two of the big pots in our garden are also his work. 

This porcelain charmer is by Dolores Fortuna of Galena, who currently shows her work at Abel Contemporary Gallery in Stoughton. We bought this one on a visit to Dolores' studio. It did not yet have a handle and she offered us a number of options. We could not resist the idea of a teapot with a barbed wire grip. 

This weekend we are going to repaint our bedroom from deep yellow ochre to a shade of gray. All the art will be replaced. Mark's large, gilt framed abstract painting from his college days will move from the bedroom to the wall behind the teapots. So this space is due to change again as well. 

In a vase for Easter

Our weather the last few days has been very changeable with sun, rain, wind and snow showers putting an end to some of my early spring blossoms. Luckily my Easter display didn't need anything but a pair of small bouquets. This one features a Trillium sessile in bud, an unknown Hellebore and Iris reticulata 'George'.

I have a lot of Hellebores in my garden but many were planted before I started paying attention to their names. Helleborus niger 'Sunset Group' — the white flower — is the only one in this bouquet I can name. This is a wonderful variety with short, sturdy stems that hold the flowers outward! The old foliage lies flat so the flowers are visible. 

I decided to do my usual Easter display as a way to make things look normal, even if life doesn't feel normal at the moment. I am probably the only person who adds a vase of dried Chinese lantern pods to a spring arrangement.

But those orange pods look great with my collection of carrots. Mark is a carrot fancier so I always gave him a non-edible version in his easter basket. No Easter baskets this year as I totally forgot about the holiday the last time I was at the grocery store.

My 1970s sock bunny came from a wonderful little shop called "Home Made Goods" in Chicago. 

I love felt creations and have a variety of veggies as well as this beautifully-dressed bunny babe. 

I once almost bought a winter coat that was bright yellow and embroidered all over, which probably explains why I am so taken with this bunny. 

Hope you have a safe and healthy weekend.

Wearing of the the green

Though I have collections of buttons, these are not mine. Just a colorful find on Pinterest. 

The beginnings of our house

We moved into our house twenty-five years ago this summer. We were thrilled to discover that the Don Smith family — who built the house in 1954 and lived here for about forty years — left us a treasure trove of what I consider "historic" records. You might not consider documents from the 1950s as historic, but given Americans' propensity to tear down buildings and replace them with newer models, any documents that survive tell an important story. And the house is still here as well. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

This is the page from a magazine like Better Homes and Gardens that shows what our house looked like when it was built — because the Smiths used these plans. And we have photo documentation as well. 

This advertising flyer touts the benefits of this new neighborhood, Orchard Ridge. When our house was built, Orchard Ridge was virtually a country suburb. Our street was a gravel road. 

On the reverse side of the above flyer is this map showing the proposed "Beltline Boulevard Route" that would whisk you downtown in twelve minutes. This was built and today is known as the West Beltline and it will take you downtown in twelve minutes — early on a Sunday morning. The rest of the time it is packed full of traffic!

This is the landscape plan of all the trees and shrubs that the Smiths put in when they built the house. Mark and I used this to identify what was still here after we bought the house. A surprising number of things were all still growing right where they'd been planted. 

Since we bought this property to create a garden, this bill from the original landscape designer is our favorite item. Look at the incredible list of material that you could get for a mere $150.00 back then. Today one can easily pay that for a specimen tree!

We've always intended to frame these items and hang them in our front entranceway. And, of course, they will stay with the house when we leave. If you have any kind of documetation like this for your house or garden, I urge you to preserve it for the future. These pieces of paper help us remember that we are just the custodians of our property, not the "owners." And I like to think that they will help the next family who lives here to understand that as well.

Tomorrow: The history of our house in photographs.  

We're buried again

It started snowing early Monday evening and continued for much of the night. And then it started up again mid-morning Tuesday. Almost everything in the garden is buried under a coating of white. This was the view at the edge of our driveway on January 29. Not as much snow as this latest storm. 

And the view yesterday morning, February 12. Clearly there wasn't much wind as Mary's former gravestone was not as covered up.

Mark bought this from a monument company that was going out of business. They told him that the stone was "de-accessioned," meaning the family ordered a new monument listing multiple names on it. Apparently for large family plots this is not an uncommon practice. Our stone reads:

Mary

Wife of William Lavin

Died April 5, 1868

84 yrs.

Native of Co. Sligo

Ireland

May She Rest in Peace

. . .

She must have been one tough cookie to leave her home and come here; to say nothing of living through the American Civil War. If you do the math, she was born in 1784. It's hard to even begin to imagine what her life in Sligo must have been like in the eighteenth century. One hopes coming to America turned out to be a wise move.

Fiber Friday: Helen Louis Allen Textile Collection 50th Anniversary Celebration

 

One of A Kind Ahead of Her Time:
The Legacy of Helen Louise Allen

January 27 – April 18, 2019

Opening Reception: January 27th, 1 – 3 pm
Ribbon cutting and remarks at 1:30 pm

Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery

School of Human Ecology, UW-Madison

Guest curated by Lynn K. Mecklenburg, the inaugural exhibition of the textile gallery showcases collection pieces representing the travels of Professor Helen Louise Allen (1902-1968).

Allen had a lifelong passion for handwork and the creative crafts. In 2019, she would thrive in society’s revitalization of the artisanal, the handmade, and the original. One of A Kind Ahead of Her Time invites gallery goers to consider the woman, the collector, and the educator who looked at textiles as carriers of human culture, a thought that remains relevant in today’s diverse and globalized world.

The exhibition is on view in conjunction with the Ruth Davis Design Gallery show from Applique to Zardozi: An Anniversary Sampler.

About the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection: Over the past half century, the collection has grown from an original 4,000-piece gift to more than 13,000 objects that have inspired and informed thousands of students, researchers, historians, and textile aficionados. The new Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery is a permanent space dedicated to year-round displays of the collection.

Editor's note: I am a boardmember of the Friends of HLATC and am a big fan of textiles and the collection. I am posting this information because of that interest and not because I received any remuneration. The text is taken directly from the collection's website. If you have an interest in textile design, I suggest you "like" the Design Gallery's Facebook page which posts about textiles just enough to whet your appetite without overwhelming other FB posts. I love to see what they have discovered that's new, old, from here or there. 

Fiber Friday

One more from my sister-in-law. This is a view of one wall of her workroom, sewing space, art studio. The top of a wooden chest serves to display assorted treasures. On the wall above, three adjacent cork boards corral memories, souvenirs and inspiration. The room also contains a work table and shelving that holds all her supplies. 

This leather tray holds her many pincushions and thimbles. 

The bowl is filled with felt and fabric balls. She bound up all of her scraps of Japanese indigo fabrics into the ball on the right side of the container. The fabric strips are held in place with red thread.

While she doesn't have a large workroom, for me it has the perfect proportion of work space to inspirational space. What more does one need in order to create?

Christmas throughout the house

My sisters-in-law tend to spread a bit of Christmas all through their houses. I love the big moments as well as the little touches like this beaded tree dangling from a cupboard doorknob. 

Mark's late father, Henry, was the subject of some of Mark's art, but his dad — especially in his youth — produced wonderful art as well. There were enough pieces of his youthful work that Mark and his siblings all have a piece. HIs sister Sara displays her artwork by Henry every Christmas. This was done in 1932 when their dad was 13 years old. An absolute treasure. 

Our fireplace mantle is quite narrow so it makes it hard to create a lovely display like this one. Sara and I both have pastel drawings with collaged materials by Madison artist LuAnn Erickson.

Her's is another lovely addition to her home's holiday decor. 

Sara's mantle has a number of things on it but to me the overall effect is light and bright. That's because the objects are all related by theme and are similar shapes in limited colors that reflect the framed artwork. 

We both like to display a few of our remaining childhood items along with toys that we've collected over the years. Her's are spread out on top of a long shelf with unusual and antique boxes interspersed. I followed her lead years ago and bought the same big red bell which I then combined with a copy of "The Polar Express" as a gift for Mark. For many years I always searched out and bought the best holiday book for children. Now those books are exiting my shelves as gifts. 

I love to get out Mark and my old childhood treasures each Christmas and I always look forward to visiting Sara's treasures as well. 

Pretty in pink

Back in the 1960s my paternal grandparents had an aluminum Christmas tree with a gizmo that bathed it in changing colors. All of us grandkids were struck with the shock of the new, though I never really warmed to it. But last year in December, after my tree was up and decorated, I stumbled across my equally glitzy dream tree. 

If you asked me, I never would have said I was searching for a pink tree made of twisted metallic paper (as near as I can tell). But at only about 4 feet tall, it was the right size to put on the drop leaf table in the red room. 

It is way too intrusive a color and material to be at home in any other room in the house. The red walls in this room, however, are the perfect backdrop and actually seem to tone the color down a bit. 

I store all my Christmas ornaments in two big cardboard boxes that each have three trays divided into many small sections to keep all these precious pieces of glass from rolling around and knocking into each other. One bin has all the green/blue/silver objects and the other holds red/pink/purple/gold colored decorations. So it was easy to match my ornaments to the color of my new tree. 

Among my early personal splurges is the Christopher Radko quirky, slightly creepy face on the left above. I love Radko's early ornaments which were strange and unusual compared to his much larger, later pieces that focused more on traditional Christmas motifs.

I've always gravitated to pink and red ornaments so it was no problem to decorate this tree, though I did add a few new things like the cherry red pine cone or the pink sphere with blue daisies. I can't believe how much I am enjoying this silly pink tree. And Mark loves the fact that it is not out in the living room staring him in the face!

The lame duck made me do it!

Last week's lame duck debacle in Wisconsin had me in need of serious distraction! Luckily, it arrived in the form of an e-mail from Carolyn's Shade Gardens in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her message stood out like a beacon in a sea of breaking news updates that were too depressing to keep reading. Carolyn, on the other hand, was announcing the arrival of her 2019 Snowdrop Catalog.

 

Of course, I immediately clicked on it and placed an order! I would not call myself a "galanthophile," the name given to those who obsess and obsessively collect different varieties of snowdrops aka Galantus. But I am willing to admit that I love the lore and lure around plants like snowdrops and species Peonies that have a long history replete with fascinating stories.

 

You can buy easily buy the most common varieties of snowdrops out of season as bulbs like Tulips or Daffs. But they are one plant whose success is touted to buying them "in the green," meaning right after they've finished flowering. To do that, you need to live in the UK where this is a common practice or live near a grower in the States. OR find someone like Carolyn's Shade Gardens who sells snowdrops in the green at her nursery in the spring as well as on-line.

 

The plants I just ordered will come next spring after they've flowered in her nursery. Hopefully, it will be only a brief span between their arrival in the mail and when I can plant them out in my own garden. The timing is always a bit of a hit-or-miss proposition but so far it's worked for me, having placed my first order with Carolyn in 2014.

 

 

I have had good luck with the more reasonably-priced snowdrops like G. nivalis 'Viridapice,' G. woronoii and G. 'Magnet' (both photos above are my clumps of 'Magnet') but not much luck with any of the expensive yellow ones. This time I splurged on only one variety that should make a statement ('Johnathan' below), along with some guaranteed performers from Carolyn's stock (G. elwesii and G. nivalis).

 

I will plant them in my main flower bed that gets lots of early sun and has good soil and drainage. The only drawback is that it is the farthest from the house so I will definitely have to walk up to watch for them blooming. But they will be growing near my species Peonies which are equally early and always draw me out multiple times per day.

 

CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS PHOTO

 

"The Plant Lover's Guide to Snowdrops" by Naomi Slade is one of the plant-specific titles in the excellent Kew guide series. It is a good place to get information on these bulbs and how easy or difficult specific varieties are to grow, along with any quirky cultivation information. Carolyn Walker is one of the snowdrop lovers profiled in the book.